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Post by Account Deleted on Mar 26, 2017 22:26:54 GMT
I'm not convinced of that, Hibernicus. I've never really seen any evidence of this idealized self-image-- I mean, from contemporary documents. It's often struck me, reading old copies of the Irish Ecclesiastical Record and similar journals, that this myth of the complacent, self-satisfied Irish Catholicism/Irish nationalism of the past is completely fabricated. What happened is that one ideal was replaced by another. Why? I think it was television and pop culture. I think it's that simple. Personally I think (though it may be an over-simplification) that Irish society is marked by an underlying lack of self-esteem. We are small nation, subject many times in history - to the Vikings, Normans, English - so much so that it's become almost pathological now for our political representatives to doff the cap to the greater foreign power without genuinely representing Irish best interests or self-worth. There were times (albeit brief) when our national pride was piqued because we stood on our own identity and perceived achievements (our identity as a Catholic nation reinforcing national pride after the establishment of the state one such phase). It never seems to last very long, without us self-sabotaging it somehow, thus reinforcing our concerns about ourselves. The underlying national esteem insecurity is never far from the surface. As proof, one only has to see how frequently shame is employed as an emotional motivator in political and social discourse internally in Irish society anytime someone wants to educe change, even shame at things that (upon balanced reasonable examination) deserve no shame for all the good they achieved. Look at how we are now invited to be ashamed of our Catholic heritage, or to be ashamed of our abortion laws. A question was raised recently at the Citizens Assembly: if the people opted to keep the eighth amendment as commendable, what would happen in regard to the UN who reproached us demanding we address our abortion laws? The answer was something to effect that the Irish would be in a position to return to the UN and invite them to re-examine their thinking on international abortion rights. That would certainly be something a mature nation with a strong sense of self-esteem for the wishes of its people, and a sense of equal worth on the world stage would do. Or will we just doff the cap again in shame at the displeasure of the UN. I wonder.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 6, 2017 22:05:27 GMT
Lack of self-esteem and self-idealisation can be two sides of the same coin, for individuals as well as societies. I remember reading an early C20 book called THE PHILOSOPHY OF IRISH IRELAND by DP Moran which is quite incisive on this.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 6, 2017 22:12:31 GMT
The new issue of the PHOENIX is a mixed bag. On the one hand there is a rather incisive piece pointing out how little coverage the mainstream press gave to the fact that the Abortion Rights Campaign were recently made to pay back a large donation they had received from George Soros's Open Society Foundation to campaign against the 8th Amendment. (The ARC are the real fanatics who are openly calling for Ireland to adopt the Canadian model - no regulation at all.) On the other hand, it has a sneering profile of Katie Ascough, the new UCD Students Union president, who is a prolifer and has written for ALIVE. Apart from linking her to reactionary French monarchists (her aunt is married to a relative of the Orleans dynasty) it also laments that the SU apparatchiks did not unite behind a single pro-choice candidate to stop her. So SU elections are to be fought on the single issue of abortion, living and learning conditions bedamned? There is also a short piece on recent developments in Renua.
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Post by hibernicus on May 26, 2017 21:23:14 GMT
Last Sunday's BUSINESS POST magazine had a piece by one of their regular columnists - I think Nadine O'Regan - suggesting that as marriage has been redefined so drastically, we should consider doing away with monogamy as a requirement. Not that she cared for such a thing personally, you understand; she was only asking. The American intelligentsia have been floating this bright idea in their journals for some time. Sooner or later their Irish admirers were bound to take it up. Here we go again.
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Post by hibernicus on May 31, 2017 20:15:33 GMT
Colm Toibin was interviewed in last Sunday's BUSINESS POST calling for the British abortion system - which he accurately described as "abortion on demand" to be replicated here, on the grounds that since women will go to Britain anyway anything else would be hypocrisy. The Beckettian despair which underlies the apparent cheeriness of (some) of his stories was never more strikingly displayed.
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Post by hibernicus on May 31, 2017 20:20:17 GMT
Last week Matthew Parris had a column in the SPECTATOR denying that morality is undermined by the loss of religious belief. This week he had a column lamenting Theresa May's dropping proposed charges for dementia patients, on the grounds that the charges would have exerted what he saw as salutary social pressure to have the elderly put to sleep like dogs. One of the most alarming features of moral corruption is when the person loses any awareness that they are in fact corrupt.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 3, 2017 19:33:39 GMT
The IRISH INDEPENDENT today is trumpeting that by electing Leo Varadkar we have shown that "we are no longer the conservative Catholic rock on the edge of Europe - we are in the forefront of social progress". Join the lemmings.
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Post by Young Ireland on Jun 3, 2017 19:41:29 GMT
The IRISH INDEPENDENT today is trumpeting that by electing Leo Varadkar we have shown that "we are no longer the conservative Catholic rock on the edge of Europe - we are in the forefront of social progress". Join the lemmings. To be honest, I actually think that Varadkar's reign could actually be worse than Enda Kenny's, since his style is even more technocratic and tending towards centralism, hard to imagine though it might be. Coveney at least would have sought to balanced the country, and has expressed reservations about removing the Eighth Amendment, whereas Varadkar has already committed to a referendum. I have a feeling that thing might become even worse..
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jun 3, 2017 19:57:19 GMT
It's hilarious that we are always being told to look past sex, race, sexuality etc. but the very first thing the media picks up on about Varadkar's election is his attraction towards men.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 10, 2017 22:27:06 GMT
Coveney committed to a referendum as well. From Varadkar's rhetoric I suspect we will get something that can be presented as "moderate" but is festooned with loopholes as big as barn doors.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 13, 2017 20:11:41 GMT
Kitty Holland has a piece in the IRISH TIMES today denouncing the fact that a young woman who wanted an abortion was temporarily detained because the psychiatrist who assessed her thought that an abortion was not the answer for her problems and she was in no fit mental state to decide. Ms Holland, who recently told us she has had two abortions herself, goes on to call for abortion on demand in the name of compassion. Never did I feel so strongly the force of Walker Percy's remark in his last novel, THE THANATOS SYNDROME- "Compassion led to the concentration camps". (Percy was partly thinking of his youthful memories of flirting with Nazism on a 1930s visit to Germany, lest anyone think this was just a glib remark.)
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jun 13, 2017 21:47:07 GMT
Having (regrettably) read Walker Percy's pretentious novel The Movie-Goer, I wouldn't particularly pay any attention to him. What a waste of time that was.
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Post by assisi on Jun 14, 2017 14:47:47 GMT
Having (regrettably) read Walker Percy's pretentious novel The Movie-Goer, I wouldn't particularly pay any attention to him. What a waste of time that was. You should read Percy's 'Lost in the Cosmos' which is dryly funny and very perceptive. It's written as a spoof self help book and is easy to read (there is a section on semiotics that I found boring, which can be ignored if you wish).
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Post by assisi on Jun 14, 2017 15:00:35 GMT
Kitty Holland has a piece in the IRISH TIMES today denouncing the fact that a young woman who wanted an abortion was temporarily detained because the psychiatrist who assessed her thought that an abortion was not the answer for her problems and she was in no fit mental state to decide. Ms Holland, who recently told us she has had two abortions herself, goes on to call for abortion on demand in the name of compassion. Never did I feel so strongly the force of Walker Percy's remark in his last novel, THE THANATOS SYNDROME- "Compassion led to the concentration camps". (Percy was partly thinking of his youthful memories of flirting with Nazism on a 1930s visit to Germany, lest anyone think this was just a glib remark.) Yes, compassion without TRUTH is nothing more than short term indulgence of the person or persons receiving the compassion. It may work short term as it gratifies an immediate need but will come back to haunt the compassion taker and the compassion giver in the future.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 18, 2017 17:30:28 GMT
The current PHOENIX has a profile of Ailbhe Smyth, one of the leading pro-abortion campaigners (they quote an interview from some years back in which she dismisses the pro-choice label on the grounds that you have to say what it is that you are in favour of choosing). Worth reading on the "know thine enemy" principle. I must say I was a bit surprised to see that she is in PBP/SWP; she has a reputation as being such a militant feminist I was surprised she would be in a mixed-sex organisation. I was less surprised to see a quote from an article she had written for a magazine published by "Catholics for Choice", given that that organisation is made up of "Catholics" who are less Catholic than the Portadown Orangemen (insofar as that is possible). In fairness, I should say that I have actually met her once or twice in a professional context (at academic conferences) and she was quite civil. That doesn't make her views and actions any less reprehensible and harmful.
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